


i could've missed it, i never knew

by tootsonnewts



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, because since when have these hands ever been light ya feel?, but i wanted to handle it in a way that felt more realistic in my own head, if not a little heavy handed, it's a fix it fic of a sort, this is literally me processing the final season so i can move beyond it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-02-20
Packaged: 2019-09-19 16:52:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17005461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tootsonnewts/pseuds/tootsonnewts
Summary: A sob tears itself from his throat when Shiro picks up the rough slip of paper laid gingerly inside. The familiar scrawl hits him like a punch to the teeth, all compact, efficient block print.‘you can always call.-k’Shiro sinks to his knees and cries like he hasn't in years.He doesn't call.a future.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HAHAHA, I'M UPSET.
> 
> title taken from ['die young' by sylvan esso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Gh8hdjcU4E)

It takes three years for things to fall apart, but when they do, it's in spectacular fashion.

Keith is gone, driven away by a bleeding heart and the calling of a mending universe. The others are with their families, excelling and reveling in the peace they so deserve. And Shiro is here. Alone in a huge, beige house on Earth. Surrounded by the ashes of everything he's ever left behind.

He can call. He knows he can. He can hop on his old communicator and send a direct signal up to wherever it needs to reach. He could see him again after all this time.

His hand hovers over the screen.

He can't call.

What would he even say?

_You were right. I’m a coward. I ran away and I’m sorry._

He doesn't call.

 

+++

 

Two years after the divorce, Lance shows up on his doorstep on a sunny, cheerful morning with a small box tucked under his arm and a nervous smile on his face.

“Hey, buddy.” His voice is wavering, overbright in its falsehood. “I, uh”—he holds out the package—“I'm sorry, I let it slip. I forgot you hadn't told him, and just...sorry, dude.”

Lance passes the package over, and Shiro accepts it with shaking hands. It doesn't need to be said, but the thought of who it's from terrifies him. It's obvious Lance can tell, all shuffling feet and wringing hands in Shiro's entry.

“Thank you, Lance,” he whispers, eyes stuck on the parcel in his grasp. It takes a few moments for Shiro to come back to himself, glancing quickly up at his guest and setting the package gingerly on the entry table. Lance tracks the motion with his eyes, narrowing them on Shiro's empty finger as he does.

“How long has it been, man?”

They both know exactly how long.

“Since the—”

“Wedding.”

Shiro pauses. “Yes.”

“God, you're awful.”

Shiro can't help his self deprecating laugh.

“I'm aware.”

“Open it. Get your shit together. Do what some of us _can't_ , Shiro, Jesus Christ.”

Lance turns on a heel and stalks out the door, slamming it in his wake and yeah, he deserves that. Still, it takes herculean effort for Shiro to turn back to the package, nonetheless reach for it.

So he doesn't.

He turns away and heads for the kitchen. He makes a cup of coffee. He flips through the newspaper, pretending that he can even see the words on the page. He goes to the bathroom, takes a scalding shower, shaves his face. He heads to the bedroom, puts on his most comfortable clothes.

The sun is down when Shiro admits to himself that he can't put it off any longer.

He traipses back to the front table, settles his fingers down on the brown paper wrapping. He traces the taped seams with a ginger touch. His cheeks sting with the urge to cry. Shiro shoves the feeling down and snatches the package up, slipping his index finger beneath the edge of the paper and tearing it open.

It's not big, whatever it is he's been sent. It’s not more than the size of a box of checks. It doesn't weigh much, either, but the heaviness of its meaning nearly drags him to the floor.

Taking a deep breath, Shiro opens the box and peers inside.

A sob tears itself from his throat when Shiro picks up the rough slip of paper laid gingerly inside. The familiar scrawl hits him like a punch to the teeth, all compact, efficient block print.

_‘you can always call._

_-k’_

Shiro sinks to his knees and cries like he hasn't in years.

He doesn't call.

 

+++

 

Shiro’s thirty-fifth birthday arrives before he can really comprehend where he is. He’s spitting distance from forty, which is halfway to eighty, which is basically dead, and he can’t help but panic, imagining himself as a ghost left to haunt the world forever under the weight of his unfinished business.

Curtis sent a card.

It doesn’t hurt anymore, acknowledging that failed part of his life, but it does pull at the scar tissue knit heavily across his heart. It stings a little, tugs even more at the part of his soul that he can’t set right. He still dreams about soft raven hair, banged up knuckles, a sharp smile flashing in the dark. In his mind’s eye, he passes his fingers through those mussed up locks, watching an angular face fondly as it settles against the expensive feather pillows in his too big, empty bed.

It’s early still, the sun just barely peeking over the horizon as Shiro settles in a chair on his back porch. He clutches a steaming mug of coffee in one hand and a familiar, battered box in the other. He doesn’t need to open it again. He doesn’t need to glance inside at the old piece of paper he still hasn’t been able to bring himself to touch. He doesn’t even need to see it to _see_ it.

_you can always call._

_always_

_always_

_always_

And that’s the bitch of it. Always has been. No matter what happened, no matter where he went, no matter how he strayed, Keith would always answer. If the phone rang, and it was Shiro’s information showing on the screen, he would always answer.

Even when Shiro threw himself headlong into a wedding, a new dream he’d convinced himself he needed to pursue, Keith answered. He stood there, beside him, as Shiro smiled and cried and repeated words that would ultimately prove meaningless.

Keith had his back, stood tall and strong, spoke evenly and smoothly of how proud he was to be by Shiro that day, how honored to be chosen as his best man. Then, when it was all over, Shiro watched his eyes shutter, his smile slip, and his back turn as he laid a hand on Kosmo and vanished without a trace.

Before the wedding, they argued only once.

Keith was passionate but logical, as he always is. His truth lanced through Shiro’s ribs like well-aimed arrows.

_I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Shiro! I don’t get it! It’s only been six months and you know this is what you want?_

_Why are you running away?_

_What are you afraid of?_

_Why me?_

But they were both always more stubborn than was probably healthy. So, Keith stood tall, did his duties, cracked his heart open on the pavement and let his emotions scatter in the wind. Then, when he was done, he left and never looked back.

Shiro looks up into the rapidly brightening sky.

Hopefully he’s happy now, wherever he is. It’s the only thing Shiro wants for him. The only thing he has any right to want for him.

The party the team throws for him is a relatively quiet affair. Since ending the fight and returning home for good, parties got real old, real fast for them all. This one is nice, though. Comforting. There’s a noticeable hole nestled right in the middle, but everyone dutifully ignores it.

For a time, anyway.

Shiro is five beers deep before anyone says anything to him.

It’s Pidge, because of course it is. She plops down lightly beside him on the couch, draping her legs across his lap, ankles crossed daintily. There are two shot glasses in her hands, and even though she basically throws herself all over the place, she doesn’t spill a drop.

“So,” she begins, shoving one of the glasses in his hands, “I’m not gonna pry the way I know the others already have.” They both glance across the room to where Lance, Matt, and Hunk furtively stare them down. “But I will say this”—she reaches out and pushes his hand up to his mouth, forcing him to tip the shot back as she does the same, flinching in the face of bottom shelf vodka—”god, that’s the only time we’re doing that tonight.”

Shiro tries to smother a chuckle beneath his liquor cough.

“Anyway,” she says with a smile, tossing the shot glass to the floor, “they didn’t want me to say anything. They think you should have to do this on your own, and I tend to agree. But we also want you to be happy again.”

Shiro opens his mouth to argue.

“No, you’re not, so don’t try and bullshit me.” Pidge sighs and kneads her temple. “He’s single, you know.”

Shiro opens his mouth again, eyebrows climbing into his hairline.

“That doesn’t mean he’s always been,” she interrupts sharply. “Out of all of us, he deserved it the most. And he had it for a while. But his partner died on a humanitarian mission gone wrong a few years back.”

Shiro closes his mouth.

“That doesn’t mean that he didn’t — doesn’t — still love you, y’know. He always has. Probably always will, for God knows _what_ reason.”

Shiro keeps his mouth closed. Presses his lips together tight.

“He still asks about you when he checks in.”

He can’t do it anymore.

“Pidge, _Katie._ I—”

“It’s weird to love someone and want them to be happy, but still hate their guts for a mistake they made, you know?”

“Please—”

“Wait, nah, that’s the wrong choice of words. I don’t hate you. I’m just disappointed in you. Holy fuck, I’m dad now.”

“I don’t—”

“The point is,” she continues forcefully, “you’re getting older. We’re all getting older. And don’t you think, for once in your life, you should let someone else tell you what to do?”

He doesn’t say it out loud, but he thinks that maybe, _maybe_ she’s right.

Katie slips a package in his hands. He never even noticed she had it with her. His situational awareness has really dulled during his time in retirement.

“I still won’t outright tell you what to do, Shiro. But I will suggest that you do something.”

Right there, with a Holt in his lap, Shiro opens the package with trembling hands. It’s the same size as the last one, wrapped in the exact same way. He lifts the lid carefully, bracing himself for whatever he may find inside.

It’s a simple thing, a token, by anyone else’s standards. Not even framed, just a simple glossy three by five of a time long gone. It’s a group shot, all of Team Voltron gathered in front of Atlas and the Lions, arms thrown over shoulders, smiles stretched across bright faces.

He remembers this photo. Remembers the day it was taken. They hadn’t yet thrown themselves into the final battle. It was a break, a small lull in their constantly divided attentions, when they all managed to come together for an afternoon of food and laughter. He still remembers the smile bright on Keith’s face long before this picture was even snapped. He remembers reaching out to wipe mustard from a smooth cheek, cracking a joke about how Keith ate just like his dog. He remembers Keith turning pink under his touch and blaming it on his messy youth and a mentor that never taught him table manners.

He remembers the hug he tugged Keith into for the photographer to capture.

He remembers, and he smiles, and he cries.

 

+++

 

Shiro is thirty-five years old, one day, and fourteen hours old when he picks up his old communicator.

The contact code is as familiar and beloved as it ever was as he slowly types it in from memory.

Wherever he is, it must either be far away or a planet with a thick atmosphere, because all Shiro can see on the screen is fractal tearing and stuttering pixelation. The voice, though. _That voice._

It’s different now, older and slightly more gruff. But it’s still his. It’s still warm as honey and soothing to boot.

Shiros eyes well up against his will when the audio feed connects.

“I was wondering when you’d call, Takashi.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i couldn't let this go without giving keith his moment.

It's painful, loving a person to the core, only to learn that core isn't the caramelized crystal you thought it was. It's painful to love a concept and learn how misguided your judgement was. 

It's painful to stand at an altar with the man you love most, only to not be the one he stands across from. It's painful to realize this is only half of the reality, and you've long since lost access to the other half. 

Endings are familiar to Keith. In a way, they’re more familiar than beginnings. He makes them seem as effortless as clutching a hand in Kosmo’s thick fur and striding away. The sting never stops, though. 

 

+++

 

Love has never been altogether kind to Keith. It's given him glimpses, snatches of a life beyond stress and discomfort. But ultimately, those glimpses are blotted out, a shadow across his sun.   
  
The finality of this truth hits Keith hard, his mouth twisted up in a wry smile as he watches Thrulian's body jettison into space, his mother's warm arm draped heavily across his shoulders. His eyes are dry. He shed his tears days ago over his love's cooling body. 

Their cruiser waits for him just inside the hanger. He comforts himself with the thought of time to himself, clutching his partner's necklace in a tight fist. Thrul kept Keith's head in the stars, thoughts in the now, heart in the careful guidance of his hands. Now those hands are gone.

His first stop is ceremonial, nostalgic in a way he knows better than to be. It's a dirty, rusted out, hot tin shack disguised as a bar stuck in the ass crack of a bog planet not even worth plotting. It's where they went on their first date not even a year ago. 

These sorts of things are complicated for Keith. So much of his life has been spent in a consistent grief cycle that he barely reacts to the good anymore, for fear of the following turn.

Pidge's name on his communicator should make him smile.

He knows better.

“I'm sorry, Keith,” she says, and it sounds like a brick wall, trapping him in with a darkness thick enough to choke. It sounds like the sort of sentence with a question coming after. It sounds like the windup of a fucked up curveball from the world's most precise pitcher. “Do you need anything?”

A fucking break, maybe. 

 

+++

 

He should cut his hair, Keith thinks, absently twirling the end of his braid as he waits. 

They're somewhere on a beach, tits up in the sand with cold drinks at their sides when Lance decides he's done shaking like a relapse shitting razor blades. 

“He's divorced now, y'know. I wasn't supposed to say anything, so pretend I didn't, but things didn't shake out like they thought. Marriage is hard, it turns out.”

Keith wants to know what that's like. It’s an unkind thought, he knows, but he can’t help the reflex.

“Why are you telling me? If he didn't want me to know, there's obviously a reason.”

“Keith,” Lance says much too seriously, and it's that thing Keith hates so much about him. That thing where he flips so easily into  _ worry.  _ “Keith, you can't be serious.”

Keith sighs. Can't he? For once?

“Lance—”

“Nah, you're gonna shut up and I'm gonna talk now. He's a fucking mess, Keith. You are, too. We all know how much you miss each other, but you just won't  _ talk  _ about it, and I'm sorry you both lost someone, I really am—”

“Lance.” His voice shakes too much for the force he tries to use.

“But you lost each other first.”

“Lance.” He’s not begging. He’s not.

The note is small, Lance mutters as he tucks it into a little box. Keith is sure there's a question buried somewhere in there, but he refuses to acknowledge it. In his opinion, he shouldn't have to take the first step. But then again, he supposes he never really did and that's why he's here. 

 

+++

 

Hunk is late.

It's unlike him.

There are three things in this lonely universe on which Keith can rely, and they are these:

  1. His mother will always love him,
  2. Acxa will never stop commenting on his ears, and
  3. Hunk is never late.



He shoves down his panic, it won't do him any good anyway, and decides to pad the time. If Hunk truly needs him, Keith will know. His communicator pings in his pocket.

_ I should have warned you, but I'm not coming alone. _

Keith scoffs. This is, technically, a warning.

Pidge bursts through the door of the restaurant, hair pulled back in a tight bun on the crown of her head. It's severe and sharp, and a bit alarming to see on her. The scowl doesn't help. 

“I left a party for you,” she accuses, jabbing him hard in the chest with a finger. Hunk creeps in behind her, apologetic grimace on his face.

Keith rubs at the sore spot in his sternum. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“That’s the thing, Keith! You never do!” Her face is red in her anger, and it hits Keith just then how long it’s been since he’s seen her in person, nonetheless like this. “You realize it’s been nearly a year since I’ve seen you, right?”

And that’s the thing. He didn’t.

His silence is his tell.

“Yeah, I thought so,” she says, plopping down on the stool next to him. “So, spill.”

“Spill what?”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Not much, truth be told. He’s spent a great deal of his time in recent history just...floating. Bobbing along on the waves of time and following the leads his mother still feeds him and his team from base. He fights, he (occasionally) fucks, he goes home to his dog, rinse, repeat. Somehow, Keith thinks Pidge already knows this.

“He turns thirty-five this year,” Hunk cuts in.

Keith knows. He keeps the date highlighted purple in his calendar each year. Just in case. In case of what, he’s not entirely sure. Keith is the king of telling himself he’ll do something someday and then just. Not.

“He reads your letter every day,” Pidge adds. “He doesn’t think we know. But we do.”

Keith raises an eyebrow at her. “And how do you know?”

“We keep an eye on him,” she shrugs. Of course they do.

“You should come home this year,” Hunk says, setting a heavy hand down on Keith’s shoulder. “You should see him.”

Keith ignores the massive, blinking H-word in the room and shrugs Hunk’s hand off. “If he wanted to see me, he would call. He hasn’t called. So he doesn’t want to see me.”

“You might not believe this, Keith,” Pidge sighs, rubbing her temples with her fingers, “but you don’t know everything there is to know about him. Not anymore, anyway.”

“I never did, Katie.” She and Hunk freeze. “He stopped talking to me, married someone else, and made me stand there like everything was okay and we weren’t total strangers at that point. I never knew anything about him at all.”

“Keith.” Hunk’s voice is strangled. Keith sighs.

“Look guys, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I mean it. But that part of our lives is done. We’ve both moved on.”

“You haven’t, though,” Pidge answers. “He doesn’t say it, but you’re his biggest regret.”

“Wow,” Keith says dryly. “Real confidence builder.”

“Not like that, and you know it.”

“You’re stubborn, I get it,” Hunk says. “We’ll never change your mind. But, maybe we can talk you into another note? Y’know, to say goodbye and get closure or whatever.”

Keith knows what they’re doing. He refuses to fold into it. He has to stay strong and keep himself together, because that’s all he has. So, no, he won’t send a note. He’ll send the best goodbye he knows. He’ll send the last moment they were truly together. He means it as a slap in the face. He can tell Hunk and Pidge know when they see what it is.

He doubts it will be taken that way.

 

+++

 

Shiro’s birthday comes and goes, and Keith does his best to very pointedly  _ not  _ think about it. 

He doesn’t think about it as he wakes up and stares at the stars outside his cruiser bedroom’s window, fingers tangled in Kosmo’s bushy mane. He doesn’t think about it as he eats a warmed up ration bar, absently humming the happy birthday tune while he chews. He doesn’t think about it as he lands his cruiser on a beach and plays fetch with his dog.

He doesn’t think about it at all.

He doesn’t.

Night falls on the planet after a long day of not thinking about it, and Keith crawls into bed. Still not thinking about it.

And it’s fine.

Keith is fine.

He lays there in the darkness, thinking about the entirety of his life. He’s grown, learned, and changed so much since boyhood. He’s loved and lost and loved and lost and loved and lost again. It would be enough to send anyone into an existential spiral. Were he not part alien, he thinks wryly, he would have gone through several by now.

But not everyone has a Hunk. Or a Pidge. Or a Lance. Not everyone has an entire web of people ready to swoop in and save them every time their emotional winds blow. Keith wonders if they do this for Shiro, too.

He wonders a lot about Shiro, deep into the night and into the morning beyond. Did he ever care for Keith the way Keith did for him? Did he ever realize just what he meant to a dust-coated, sweaty, bedraggled desert urchin with no other path to take in life but the stars? Did he know he tore Keith’s heart from his chest the day he requested a speech about Shiro marrying the love of his life, a complete stranger to Keith?

Did he hurt like Keith hurt over Thrul when Shiro lost his husband to their differences?

Mostly, Keith wants to know if Shiro hurt over the loss of his best friend as much as Keith did. Keith misses him more than he probably should. He’s never stopped missing him. In the grand scheme of things, there was never any way for him to fill the Shiro-shaped hole in his heart.

The years have been largely unkind to Keith, if he really stops to think about it. But, he thinks as his communicator blips with a long forgotten ringtone, it’s given him moments of kindness, too.

 

+++

 

Shiro looks like shit.

This is all Keith can think as he approaches him. He’s still huge, still muscular, still dripping with an aura of gentle strength. But,  _ god, _ if he doesn’t look like he got dragged ten miles over concentrated glass shards. The rings beneath his eyes are bruise-dark, his shoulders slumping with a resignation Keith hasn’t seen since his teenage years. His face is caught somewhere between a grimace and a smile. It’s hideous. A small part of Keith — the cruelest part — takes small joy in that. He never did like to hurt alone.

“You look about how I feel,” Keith says, dropping lightly beside him on the park bench. This was Keith’s stipulation. They meet outside, in public, somewhere open where Keith could cut and run with no issue. The request hurt Shiro, he could tell, but all things considered, Keith thought it rather fair.

“I feel about how I look,” Shiro replies quietly.

“Retirement not treating you so hot, huh?” It’s mean. It’s cruel. Again.

Shiro flinches. So does Keith.

“I deserve that.”

“You don’t. I’m sorry.”

Shiro leans back against the bench, staring quietly up at the sky. “I am too.”

“If it helps, I’ve been doing pretty shitty, too.”

“It doesn’t really.”

“Ah well,” Keith answers lightly with a sarcastic twitching of his lips. “I thought I’d give it a shot.”

Shiro smiles. It’s a strangled sort of thing, barely there and then gone in a flash, but it happens all the same. A heavy hand, both familiar and strange, settles on Keith’s shoulder.

“I missed you.”

It’s a simple statement, a few short words. But what is there left between them, really? The days and weeks and months and years stretched thin like a rubber band, growing weaker each second, threatening to snap away for good unless given relief.

Keith settles his own hand over Shiro’s.

“I missed you so much, Keith.”

The rubber band relaxes.

“I missed you, too, Shiro.”

Keith squeezes his fingers and it feels like relief.

**Author's Note:**

> look, i have a lot of thoughts on that final season.  
> i don't normally like to write things that address canon, which i think i've made pretty clear by now through my subject matter, but i needed to address that finale for myself.
> 
> feel free to come see me on [tumblr](http://tootsonnewts.tumblr.com/) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_tootsonnewts). i made a pillowfort, but haven't decided if i'll be going over or not.


End file.
